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2013 IEEE Vice President, Publication Services and Products

The biography and position statement for the 2013 IEEE Vice President, Publication Services and Products, is listed below.

 

Gianluca Setti

Gianluca Setti for IEEE VP PSPB

Gianluca Setti received a Dr.Eng. (honors) and a Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering from the University of Bologna, in 1992 and 1997. Since 1997 he has been with the School of Engineering, University of Ferrara, Italy, where he is currently a Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. He held several positions as Visiting Professor/Scientist at EPFL (2002, 2005), UCSD (2004), IBM (2004, 2007) and at the University of Washington (2008, 2010). He is also an honorary guest professor, Wuhan University, China (2007) and a faculty member of ARCES, University of Bologna (2001–present). He co-authored three books, 12 book chapters, and over 200 technical papers and conference contributions. Dr. Setti is co-recipient of the 2004 IEEE CAS Society Darlington Award; Best Paper award at ECCTD, 2006; Best Student Paper award at EMCZurich, 2005; and at ISCAS, 2011, Best Italian Ph.D. Thesis Award in Neural Networks, 1997. He is an IEEE Fellow.
 
IEEE ACTIVITIES
COMMITTEES/BOARDS:
  • Technical Activities Board (TAB): TAB Voting Member, 2010
  • TAB Periodical Committee (TAB-PC), 2011–2012
  • TAB Periodical Review and Advisory Committee (PRAC), 2011–2012
  • PSPB Strategic Planning Committee: Member, 2012
  • PSPB Strategic Planning Committee: Chair, 2012
  • THE INSTITUTE Editorial Advisory Board: Member, 2011 and Representative to PSPB (Voting Member)
  • PSPB: Member, 2012
SECTIONS/CHAPTERS:
  • Vice Chair, North Italy Chapter, CAS Society, 2001–2008
SOCIETIES:
  • Circuits and Systems Society (CASS)
  • Past President, 2011
  • President, 2010
  • President-Elect, 2009
  • Award Committee: Chair, 2011
  • Fellow Committee Member, 2011
  • Regional Activity Division: Chair, 2009
  • Long-Term Strategic Committee: Chair, 2006, Member, 2005, 2007–2008, 2011, 2012
  • Board of Governors (BoG): Elected Member, 2005–2007, re-elected for a second term, 2008–2010
  • Constitution & Bylaws Committee: Member, 2011
  • CASS Best Paper Award Evaluation Committee Member, 2006–2009
  • IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems – Part I, Regular Papers: Editor-in-Chief, 2008–2009; Associate Editor, 1999–2004
  • IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems – Part II, Express Briefs: Editor-in-Chief, 2006–2007; Associate Editor, 2004–2005
  • IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine: Deputy-Editor-in-Chief, 2004–2007
  • IEEE CASS Distinguished Lecturer, 2004–2005
  • Technical Committee on Nonlinear CAS: Chair, 2002; Chair Elect, 2001; Secretary, 2000
CONFERENCES:
IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS):
  • Technical Program Co-Chair, 2007–2008
  • Special Sessions Co-Chair, 2005–2006
  • Chair, Track on Nonlinear CAS, 2004
  • Member, Technical Program Committee, 2000-2012. IEEE International Special Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics of Electronics Systems (NDES):
  • Technical Program Chair, 2000, Member
  • Technical Program Committee, 2000-2004. IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits, and Systems (ICECS):
  • Technical Program Co-Chair, 2012
  • Member, Technical Program Committee: 2011. IEEE/IEICE International Symposium on Nonlinear Theory and its Applications (NOLTA):
  • General Chair, 2006
  • Member, Steering Committee: 2004-2012. European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design (ECCTD):
  • Member, Technical Program Committee, 2003-2011. IEEE Asia Pacific Conference on Circuits and Systems (APCAS):
  • Member, Technical Program Committee, 2008. IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWCAS):
  • Member, Technical Program Committee, 2011
OTHER:
Proceedings of the IEEE: Guest Editor, Special issue on “Applications of Nonlinear Dynamics to Electronic and Information Engineering,” May 2002. IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals: Guest Editor, Special Section on Multi-Dimensional Mobile Information Networks,” July 2006; Special Section on “Nonlinear Theory and its Applications,” September 2007; Associate Guest Editor, Special Section on “Nonlinear Theory and its Applications,” September 2005, 2006, and 2007. IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Areas in Circuits and Systems: Guest Editor, Special issue on “Circuits, Systems and Algorithms for Compressive Sensing,” September 2012 Awards: IEEE Fellow, 2006; IEEE CAS Society Darlington Award (2004), Best Paper Award ECCTD, 2006; Best Student Paper award, EMCZurich, 2005, IEEE ISCAS, 2011; Best Italian Ph.D. Thesis Award in Neural Networks (1997)
 
MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
Referring in particular to the activities related to publications and conferences:
  1. Founder of the IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Areas in Circuits and Systems (JETCAS), which launched in 2011 and which the CASS felt to be fundamental to allow the Society to maintain its long-lasting tradition in community building in new and emerging areas. Online access to JETCAS will be offered as a benefit to all CASS members (http://jetcas.polito.it/).
  2. As EIC of TCAS-I (2008–2009) and as EIC of TCAS-II (2006–2007), Dr. Setti succeeded in reducing the average first decision time to less than 68 and 60 days, respectively (with an improvement of more than 100% with respect to the recent past), while the average submission to publication time was decreased to less than 8 and 7 months. At the same time, he was able to improve the overall reputation and journal quality, as proven by the fact that the 2007 Impact Factor of TCAS-II and the 2008 Impact Factor of TCAS-I reached the highest value ever. Dr. Setti has also introduced a highly improved version of the Web review system interface for all CAS Society journals, which was greatly instrumental to achieving the above-mentioned results. He also strengthened the collaboration with journals of “sister” societies, with particular emphasis to the IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits, with which TCAS-I now has a yearly joint special section as a follow-up of the CICC conference.
  3. As Deputy EIC of the CAS Magazine, he introduced thematic special issues since 2006. This has been a key event in attracting a strong interest in the publication, as proven by the fact that the 2009 5-years-IF of the CAS Magazine is as large as 7.54, which is the highest among all publications in the area of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.
  4. As Technical Program Co-Chair of the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS, CASS flagship conference) in 2007 and 2008, Dr. Setti was instrumental in assuring a continuation in the trend of improvement of the technical quality of the conference, which resulted in an acceptance rate of about 43% over approximately 2000 submissions. Furthermore, during his Presidency of CASS, he was able to have approved a five-year contract for the ISCAS paper-selection software, thus providing more continuity to the conference.
  5. As 2010 President of the CAS Society, he was able to achieve the extension of the mandate of the CASS President to two years (starting 2012), to give more continuity to the activities undertaken by the Society, and to have approved the overall restructuring (starting in 2011) of the CASS regional and membership activity, to guarantee a more efficient use of the funds in generating services for the members.
 
QUALIFICATIONS:
Gianluca Setti possesses a long-lasting practice as a volunteer for several IEEE publications (ranging from his seven-year activity as an Associate Editor to the experience he has accumulated as the Deputy Editor-in-Chief for an IEEE magazine, as the Editor-in-Chief for two different IEEE Transactions, as well as the Guest Editor for the Proceedings of the IEEE and for the IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems) and conferences (Technical Program co-chair of ISCAS for two years and member of the TP Committee of eight different IEEE conferences for more than 12 years). In these roles, he was able to gather significant experience on procedure and best practices for improving the status and the technical quality of journals and conferences (for instance, as Editor-in-Chief of TCAS-I and TCAS-II, he significantly decreased the paper review turnaround time by more than 100% with respect to the past as well as the submission-to-publication delay), which may be put to good use within PSPB. More recently, he has been able to get acquainted with IEEE procedures and structures, especially in relation to publications and products, thanks to 1) his work as proponent of a new IEEE periodical (IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Areas in Circuits and Systems) and a new IEEE Product (IEEE Virtual Journal on Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits, aiming in proposing an electronics commented selection of the best publications in the area of RFIC published by CASS, SSCS, MTTS and APS), and 2) his participation as a member in the TAB Periodical Committee, Periodical Review and Advisory Committee (PRAC), PSPB, and PSPB Strategic Planning Committee (also as chair for the latter in 2012). It is felt that the knowledge of these procedures and the visibility across the activities of these committees may be an important asset as a possible member of PSPB. Furthermore, he is also well accustomed to working in development of “non-standard” ways of information dissemination, since he has worked in the development of both the CASS electronic Newsletters and, more recently, in the design of the new CASS Web site. Finally, he was recently actively involved in the Research Evaluation Exercise of Italian Universities (VQR), which gave him the opportunity to deepen his knowledge on bibliometric measures and the role IEEE may have in this area.
 
POSITION STATEMENT:
The impact of IEEE publications, conferences, and products is certainly fundamental on the whole scientific/practitioner community. There are, however, several ways in which this might be improved or may be a possible opportunity to pursue:
  1. IEEE journals are considered to be *the* leading research publications, and to present results in those that are top ranked is becoming a key issue for every scientist. The use of the most proper bibliometric quality factor to establish a reliable journal ranking has therefore become of paramount importance. IEEE was so far mainly relying on the Impact Factor (IF), which is, unfortunately, not the most reliable index. In fact, in addition to the critics related to its definition, the IF can easily be artificially inflated by improper editorial practice (see f.i. [1]). As chair of PSPB-SPC, I have already started to highlight the necessity of spreading the use of better indicators such as the Eigenfactor and the Article Influence to promote the establishment of reliable quality ranking of scientific publications. If elected as VP-PSPB, I will certainly continue along this direction.
  2. The conversion into XML of Xplore content offers new opportunities for IEEE, since it allows to easily collect citations from/to papers in Xplore. This could be exploited to: a) correlate the number of citations with the number of downloads and offer to the editors-in-chief a clear picture of the interest of the readership; the availability of this data could help adopting best practices such as follow-up with authors of “successful” papers to invite them to publish again with IEEE, as well as expanding areas particularly interesting for the readership; and b) to have IEEE becoming more proactive in the bibliometric arena by computing the most important index referring to citations collected in Xplore and developing something similar to Scopus Analytics.
  3. The quality and management level is not uniform across all IEEE publications. It would be very useful to develop a set of best practices that could assist the EIC when needed, to improve the status of their journal. The reports prepared for the five-year publication review by PRAC are a very good starting point. Best practices and good ideas need, however, to be extracted, compiled in synthetic form and diffused, by means f.i. of electronic tutorials.
  4. The cost of scholarly publication has recently increased so much that important stakeholders such as Havard University (but also major universities in Europe) do not find the current model sustainable anymore. It is therefore key for IEEE to find alternative models of publications. The recent idea of an open-access IEEE-wide journal is certainly a good starting point, but more needs to be done in this direction.
  5. One of the frequently asked questions at almost all IEEE meetings is “Does IEEE need such a large/growing set of publications?” Even trying to answer this question is extremely difficult but also of paramount strategic importance for IEEE. To tackle this issue one could try a *data-driven approach* by correlating over time several measures on a journal (number of submissions, rejection rate, finance, bibliometrics, downloads, timeliness, etc). IEEE certainly has all this data, but to the best of my knowledge, it is not contained in the same database and is not easy to elaborate. Having all this information easily accessible would certainly be a starting point toward a comprehensive picture of the status of every IEEE journal, which could lead, depending on the scenarios, to decisions on merging/grouping/refocusing of publications. [1] A. W. Wilhite, E. Fong, “Coercive Citation in Academic Publishing, Science, 335 (6068): 542–543

 

 
 

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